Bird of the Week Challenge: 11th Apr - Iconic Birds in Backyards

First off, sorry for the long delay between challenges but wow, what an excellent lot of photos you came up with for the last one! I returned last week from a trip to the Netherlands to attend the BirdLife International Group on Urban Birds steering committee meeting, only to get hit with a flu. So fun and not so fun.

Second, you may all be aware that a few changes are coming to Birds in Backyards. The biggest one will be the move of the backyard bird survey to Birdata soon, but one of the smaller ones I thought might make for a fun photo challenge: Birds in Backyards is looking for an iconic photo to encapsulate the program. Have you got anything in your coffers? Or are you up for the challenge of capturing the perfect image?

Think about the vision of Birds in Backyards "to encourage a diversity of native birds in urban and rural landscapes" (specifically the little guys we've lost over the years) through the creation of bird-friendly habitat. What does this mean? The ideal image would be:

of a small native bird

in some sort of urban habitat or obviously in a garden/backyard

be a relatively well-known 'urban' species but one we still want to encourage and could use more help

should look good in any size, from banner to thumbnail - one of the first places this image will be used is as a thumbnail for the backyard bird surveys on Birdata, woo hoo!

So the ideal photo would be something like a fairy-wren standing on the edge of a bird bath (and of course the fairy wren would make our lovely Holly very happy!). Or can you come up with something similar or better?

If you'd rather not have your photo used for Birds in Backyards and would like to just participate in the fun of the challenge, just let us know in your note - no worries!